Weekend of 16-Nov & 17 Nov

Many weekends, I want to adventure and hike and climb and party.  But sometimes a week is slow and stressful, and I need a bit of a breather.  This is one of those weekends.  At least mostly.

Saturday, 16-Nov-13

• Adventures in moving wood pellets!
  • Since we have a Pellet stove at my house in Cambridge, pellets needed to be acquired before the winter hit.  So i looked into it, and found that you can’t really buy single bags of pellets… anywhere, actually.  Instead, they sell by the ton.  Well… fuck it!  A ton is 50 bags, we’ll probably use that over the winter.  Right?  I hope so, because I ordered it up and set it to be delivered early on Saturday.
  • I was up and moving early, though… not so much before the delivery was set to be… BI didn’t hear anyone deliver anything, so I was a bit concerned that they’d just skipped over me.  I’d assumed that they would call…  But nope, I walk downstairs and the pallet of pellets is sitting and waiting for me
  • Bring Ringo outside to hang out with me while I re-stack them all indoors… it’s a long and heavy process, but it’s a pretty nice day out, so I’m actually happy starting the day this way
  • It’s a full ton… literally 50 bags weighing 40lbs each.  2000lbs.  And I moved them all in less than an hour.  With a short break in the middle to play with Ringo of course, but still.  <flexes>
• After starting the morning with some lumberjackery (yes this counts!  Shut up!) I headed inside to relax and make up an excellent (and for once, not so simple) breakfast for myself. Ground Beef, cheese, and jam omlette, with bacon and tomatoes and apple slices on the side.  With, of course, some “Thunder Mountain” espresso.  Yum!
• Spend the rest of the morning and early afternoon relaxing.  I was originally going to put the wrap on the windows to keep the heat in, but it was an unbelievably amazing day!  So instead of shuttering down the house, I opened up all the windows and let it breathe in the last breaths of autumn while Ringo and I went for a long walk
• Yeah, some video games happened too
• Around 3:00 Chirag shows up, and we hang out for a bit before rolling out to Jordan’s Furniture, where we get a late lunch and check out furniture and such.  Woo much fun.
• First party of the night is Liz’s International potluck!
  • Just a fairly standard-issue dinner party, with the disclaimer that all potluck dishes should be international.  Chirag made Bean Salad, and I cooked up some Matzos Ball soup.  And as a note?  My soup got rather amazingly rave reviews.  Mmmhmm.  Grandma’s Recipe for the win, every time.
  • hang out and gnosh on tons of small bits, people are quite good cooks!
  • We play a few hands of Cards against Humanity… but to be honest, I don’t particularly enjoy the game.  So after a bit Chirag and I head out for the next party… 
• Pack up the soup all careful-like into the car.
• And now… Second party of the night!  Katies Disney Drinking night!
  • Daniel’s sister has a fair number of parties based around a very specific theme: drinking booze and watching Disney cartoons.
  • It’s a kind of simple premise, but it works very well: the rules being that if you’re not singing along to the songs, you have to be drinking along to the songs that people are singing.  Leads to lots of horridly off-key voices, and even more completely beverages when people don’t know all the words.
  • Enjoy ourselves,  have Gin & Tonics, and watch movies!  Beauty and the Beast, along with Tangled.  I hadn’t seen Tangled before, but it was actually quite good.
• Drop off Chirag, then driving home carefully so as not to spill the soup!

Sunday, 17-Nov-13

• No rush, up slowly.
• Link up with Chirag, and grab brunch in Davis, at a place called Foundry.  AMAZING!
• Another long walk with Ringo, since Lizzie isn’t home yet, she’s at a wedding with friends.  Maybe that’s why the weather is so perfect…
• Head out to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra in Manchester!
  • Fun drive, without much difficulty
  • We park, and go out on a mission to Dunking Donuts.  However, due to Chirag’s “unique” method of reading a map, “one block up that way” turns into “a mile or so up the street in the wrong direction, so that we barely make it back to the arena in time”

    

    

    

    
    

    

    

    

    
    
  • The show itself!  Amazing and jaw-dropping! The music itself dealt with slightly low sound quality, most likely due to it being in an arena instead of somewhere with actual acoustics, but the show itself was amazing!  The lights and Pyrotechnics were top-notch, and the band members were obviously having a great time.
  • The stage itself was a prop too – different tiers, and sections would move around and swing out over the crowd, or raise up with neat lights underneath.
  • I definitely recognized most of the lights as things I’d worked on at Color Kinetics.  Kind of neat.
  • Damn though… symphonies are loud.  I think I got my hearing back two or three days later…
• Drive home, no problems there.  Nice and simple actually
• Nachos for dinner, then League with Das ‘Rag before bed.